Lower Broad Street and Beyond If having shopped your way down Broad Street you want to go back in time, visit Mustor’s Restaurant and Bar in Prince William Henry Street. This is a first hand look at a traditional Bridgetown restaurant serving the most delicious local food. Stewed pork chops and breadfruit cou cou is one famous favourite that locals go there to savour. If you are adventurous seek out ravaged Suttle Street for its old merchant houses. As the name implies, the Nut House retails all kinds of baked and raw nuts, while the small St. Lucian shop sells Bay Rum, palm leaf brooms and potions to cure many ailments. Other areas of historic interest include James Street and Lucas Street, while Swan Street teems with bargain hunters. On the other side of Suttle Street is St. Mary’s Church (1827), whose barrel-vaulted ceiling is prettily painted. This is one of Barbados’ oldest graveyards and home to a whole cast of characters in the island’s colourful history. Most notably it is where many of the free coloured community of the time were buried. Hunt for names such as Joseph Rachel, one of the earliest and wealthiest black businessmen in Bridgetown, buried there in 1760; Amaryllis Collymore, a mulatto slave born in 1745 who ended her life as an exceptionally wealthy free coloured businesswoman; the Barclay family, who were pivotal in the establishment of the African nation of Liberia and Samuel Jackman Prescod, who became Barbados’ first black Parliamentarian in 1843. Across from St. Mary’s, Jubilee Gardens displays a bit of the area’s archaeology in panels at your feet. Behind this is the Old Town Hall. Here you’re at one end of Cheapside, where fruit and vegetable markets line the road from here to well past the Central Post Office and west side bus terminal. The markets are most active on Saturday, when well-scrubbed people flock to town for shopping and seeing friends. A visit to the vendors will reveal exotic items amongst familiar produce: edible roots and tropical fruits you’ve never seen before, fragrant heaps of culinary herbs and dried bunches of medicinal ones, crude cocoa sticks from neighbouring islands, a variety of hot peppers and assorted condiments and cures in bottles. Don’t be shy! Vendors are happy to explain what you’re seeing, and you’re sure to emerge knowing more than when you ventured in. Top > Mustor’s Restaurant and Bar Middle > Vendors in Bridgetown Bottom > Cheapside Market on Saturday Morning Photos: Andrew Hulsmeier
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BRIDGETOWN EXPERIENCE